


Walls of Gauze

by lirin



Category: The Avengers (Marvel Movies)
Genre: Emotional Hurt/Comfort, Gen, Pietro Maximoff Lives, Post-Avengers: Endgame (Movie), Telepathy
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-05-24
Updated: 2020-05-24
Packaged: 2021-03-03 04:00:24
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,629
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24338530
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/lirin/pseuds/lirin
Summary: On the battlefield, so many returns from the dead were being celebrated. And so Wanda fled, unable to face their joy when her loss was not one of those that had been returned. And yet, in her imagination she could almost feel Pietro's mind there among the rest, shining out from the crowd...
Relationships: Pietro Maximoff & Wanda Maximoff
Comments: 7
Kudos: 43
Collections: Hurt Comfort Exchange 2020





	Walls of Gauze

**Author's Note:**

  * For [EssayOfThoughts](https://archiveofourown.org/users/EssayOfThoughts/gifts).



They said she had been dead. They said she'd been dead five years, and so had half of humanity.

Around her, everyone was celebrating their victory in battle and their return from the dead. Joyful minds, all around her. People were embracing—long-lost friends, long-lost teammates, long-lost loves, long-lost family—

Wanda couldn't bear to watch. Thanos was defeated: she was no longer needed here. She turned and ran.

The land where they had fought was battle-scarred and strewn with their enemies. She ignored it all, scrambling over muddy pitted earth until the people she had left behind faded into a muddle of distant humanity and she was alone: just herself and her own sharp roiling mind. She found an undamaged tree and sat down on the ground next to it. Closing her eyes, she leaned back against the trunk.

Everything hurt. Her body was sore from the fight, and her mind was sore from everything that had happened over the last few days—or five years ago, if what Doctor Strange and everyone else said was true. Alone, here, there was no longer that painful joy of everyone else's losses undone, but yet there was no comfort either.

When Pietro had been—had been not-dead, as Wanda found herself now, Wanda had always been able to see whether he was near or far, his mind a shining star among the masses. She thought that the Mind Stone might have linked them even if they had not already been linked, but as it was, it had tightened their bond into something of crystal clarity. 

Back then, when she had first discovered that she could look into minds, Pietro had told her that she could look into his whenever she wanted.

She'd looked into it nearly all the time, in those first frightening days after Strucker's experiment succeeded. But then she worried that if she got too used to it, to wallowing in his mind as much as her own, that if they were ever separated she would be unable to function. And so she had withdrawn for a time, his mind still shining crystal ever before her, but leaving its contents closed, like a favorite book waiting on a nightstand to be reread.

And so looking into Pietro's mind had become a treat to be savored, something that she only did when they were most frightened or lonely or discouraged. Whenever dark moments came, she would reach out to him, and she would ask to look into his mind even though she already knew that he would say yes. Pietro always said yes. And so she would push through the thin gauze that separated his thoughts from hers, and with the intertwining of their minds, the darkness would be halved and their hearts would be strengthened.

And now, Wanda was all of those things—frightened and lonely and discouraged—and full of grief besides. And Pietro was not here, to halve the pain and to soothe her mind. But when Wanda thought about him, she could almost imagine what his mind used to look like. Shining like a smile, like golden happiness. Her imagination placed him back on the battlefield, in the midst of all that distant joy, and even though all those people were there and he wasn't, Wanda thought that Pietro's mind felt the realest of all. She reached out further, because she was frightened and lonely and discouraged and she couldn't ask her memory of Pietro for permission but she knew he would say yes. She pushed through the shimmering gauze of her memory of her brother's mind and—

Sparks. Memories of the just-past battle were in the foreground, layered with their last battle in Sokovia, and she hadn't even been able to recall his mind properly, she must have fallen back into her own mind because none of this would be in her memories of Pietro's memories. _You know, I'm twelve minutes older than you. Go._ She was only hurting herself by reaching out, she told herself, she should let go, go back with the others. But the sparks of Pietro's mind were like a second skin to her, and she couldn't leave them so soon, this poor semblance of her own comfort. _W_ _anda, where are you?_ _Wanda, I'm here._

That wasn't a memory. Wanda didn't remember Pietro ever saying those exact words to her. But he must have, he must have, she'd only forgotten. Any other explanations that sprung to mind were far more unlikely—

_Wanda, it's all right. Just tell me where you are._

_North of the battlefield_ , she pushed into the memory-mind of her brother. Or the real mind, except that she didn't dare bring herself to think that that was what she was looking at, even now. This was just a memory that seems realer than all the rest, or perhaps it was a dream. _Pietro?_ she added, and then, at his mental smile and nod of acknowledgement, _Pietro! Pietro! Pietro!_ She showed him the tree she was sitting under, and the brush and grass and trampled wildflowers that surrounded her.

Pietro's memory-dream-mind was drifting closer and closer, no longer an imagined spark on the battlefield but a shining sun that filled half of her vision when she gazed south. _They said_ , she thought, and she wasn't sure whether she was thinking it into her own mind or into Pietro's, but wasn't it the same, really? _They said that they only brought back the people who were taken by Thanos's snap._

 _They were wrong_ , she thought after that, and she thought it might be Pietro thinking and not herself—or was it the same thing, really? _They overshot and picked up a few stragglers on the way._

_Since when are you a straggler? You never lagged behind even before you got so much faster than me._

_Well, actually I didn't straggle. I came back at the same time as everyone else. But I didn't want to distract you until the fight was over. If anything had happened to you—I didn't want to risk losing each other again._

_Then it's not just—I mean, you're really—that is—_ Her mind was spinning, and his along with it, and she couldn't bring herself to form the words. All around her, everything looked just as she remembered Pietro's mind looking, and yet she knew this couldn't be.

_Wanda, open your eyes. It's okay._

She didn't want to open her eyes, didn't want to let whatever this was—dream, memory, or illusion—go. Pietro hadn't felt this real to her since the moment in the Novi Grad church when his mind had been ripped from her, along with his heart and his soul. But it was what he wanted her to do, and he'd always looked out for her, and besides she would have to open them sooner or later. She reached out and gave his mind one last soft caress, then stepped back through the gauze and opened her eyes.

She wasn't alone anymore. Pietro was sitting cross-legged on the grass in front of her, both of her hands clasped in his. She hadn't realized how close his mind had gotten while she'd been inside it, but now it was right here in front of her, like a supernova of unspeakable joy. She blinked a few times, until she could remind her mind to look with her eyes and not just her thoughts. He was smiling at her, blue eyes wide and fixed on hers. "See?" he said, out loud this time. "I told you."

Her hands were reaching out without her even having to think about it. She brushed her fingertips slowly across his cheeks, and felt real skin against her hands, and flesh and bone palpable below that. This was no mere imagination or memory, though she remembered so many times that they had touched each other and many more when she imagined and wished it. He pulled her into a hug. "Pietro," she whispered, "Pietro, Pietro..."

After a minute, or maybe two or three, he gripped her shoulders gently with his hands and leaned her back against the tree. "I just wanted you to see my face and I wanted to see you with your eyes open," he said, "but you don't have to stay out of my mind if you don't want to. It's nice, having you in there. It feels like home."

"It _is_ home," Wanda said. She clasped her hands in his, as they had been before, and she felt red tendrils spark between her fingertips and twine around their hands as she stepped back inside his mind.

This time, she knew it was real, and she could look around with relish instead of with hunger. There were no walls here, not to her. Only that soft, familiar, wonderful gauze that gave way before her, welcoming her presence.

Shared memories reached out around her. Some of them—playing catch with their father, eating a meal as a family, fighting side-by-side in Novo Grad—she reached out to in return, pulling them out to where Pietro could see them alongside her. Others—Strucker, Stark's bomb, that final terrible moment when their connection had been broken—she pulled the gauze tighter around, shrouding them from sight.

She'd never felt that she belonged any place as much as she felt that she belonged here. She wandered the halls of Pietro's mind, and no matter how far she wandered, she could still feel his hand clasped in his and she knew that she was happier than she'd thought she could ever be again.

When she finally opened her eyes, it was twilight around her. But even in the near darkness, she could see Pietro smiling at her. "Welcome home," he said.


End file.
